Google, Citibank, Snapdeal, Yatra and Oyo Rooms are some companies that these startups have been serving.Rashmi Menon | ET Bureau | August 04, 2016, 15:11 IST

With the recent fund crunch and intense competition, food tech companies are looking for customers in unlikely places.

In a recent report on the restaurant industry by Avendus Capital, food tech companies like Yumist (central kitchen, which operates in Delhi NCR and Bengaluru), Bite Club (Delhi NCR based aggregator of professional chefs) and InnerChef (provides meal/recipe box in seven cities) are eyeing institutional customers.

As part of that, Google, Citibank, Snapdeal, Yatra and Oyo Rooms are some companies that these startups have been serving to improve cash flow and increase scale.

The reason? The operating margin may be higher in the case of institutional sales, but the cost of acquisition per customer is negligible.

So while the cost per meal is lower, it’s also easy to predict the preferences of these customers, the report pointed out.